The Button Box
Deuteronomy 26: 1-11
Ephesians 1:15-23
I remember the button box well. It was a tin octagon shaped container that my grandmother kept inside her dresser drawer in the bedroom of their upstairs apartment on Ruth Street, in the Mount Washington section of Pittsburgh. There were many times when my family came across town for a visit, often for a Sunday afternoon or Thanksgiving dinner, that Mamoc (my mother’s mother) might get out the box to throw in a stray button that she found laying on the floor or search for a matching button for a repair that needed to be done. I always loved the button box and took the time to rummage through it as if were a treasure chest that held precious gold or silver.
According to the stamp on the bottom, the tin once held an array of assorted Sunshine Biscuits and cookies. The top of the tin had a lithograph of the Statue of Liberty while each of the eight sides had a depiction of a historical American event such as Lewis and Clark on their expedition across the country, the 1849 Gold Rush and the signing of the Constitution.
Now my grandmother was not one to waste anything - as grandmothers tended to do – and often said, “waste not - want not” although I think she modeled it more than she said it. It’s interesting that reduce, reuse and recycle are all the rage these days, but I am quite confident that recycling, reinventing and reusing was the way of life for all of our grandparents and our great grandparents before them. Of course my grandmother had kept the tin after the Sunshine biscuits were gone. She took nothing for granted and turned it into a useful button box that held an endless array of buttons, fasteners, hooks, needles, thimbles and other miscellaneous and odd items. The supply of buttons never seemed to end and there were always new buttons to look at. My mother remembers that Mamoc would save everything and would cut off the buttons from old shirts or coats and put them inside the tin to be saved and used again for some other garment in the future.
There was always a large supply of small white buttons ready to replace an empty spot on my grandfather’s nicely starched white business shirts. There were also buttons of all the colors of the rainbow: white, brown, blue, red, green and yellow, as well as buttons made of metal and fabric. There were buttons with anchors on them, and buttons with E PLURIBUS UNUM printed on them. There were round buttons, square buttons, gold and silver buttons, big buttons and very small ones. I remember looking them over and trying to imagine if a certain button came from an outfit my mother might have been wearing when she was in junior high school, or when she was a cheerleader, or maybe when she was on a date with my father.
The fascinating tin held many other things such as spools of thread, hooks and eyes, snaps, thimbles and needles of all sizes. But the one thing that fascinated my sister and I the most, were a couple of old United States half pennies that had somehow found a home inside the button box. The four or five small copper coins were always there. Karen and I liked to dig around for them, inspect them and imagine that we had discovered something that was now extremely valuable, something that we could sell for a large fortune and would make our whole family wildly rich. Ah – we dreamed of the places we could go. But the half pennies remained inside the button box alongside our dreamy imaginations.
As time went on my grandparents moved in with us, and when I was in college they both passed away and as a result the button box came into my mother’s possession. She kept it in her dresser drawer in the upstairs bedroom of our house on Glencairn Circle in a suburb of Pittsburgh. For about 35 years my mom continued the tradition of saving old buttons, throwing in extra ones that came with new outfits, and then bringing out the box when she needed to make a sewing repair. My dad was also a business man and at times his white shirts also needed those small white buttons, which seemed to magically reproduce themselves inside the button box.
When I came home for college and I needed to sew on a button, I would go and get the button box out of my mother’s dresser drawer, and invariably I would find just what I needed. I would sit on my mother’s bed and as I sifted through the many buttons, snaps, hooks and eyes, I would remember my grandparents in their upstairs apartment in Pittsburgh and all those times we would gather together for Sunday dinners. My grandparents worked very hard and were people of great and deep faith – always leaning on the arms of God during their own trials and struggles. And my grandmother made the best biscuits, which always seem to come out of the oven just in time for the grace to be said over dinner. I remembered that the biscuits were warm and comforting, especially with a pat of butter on them, and there were always enough for everyone. And while I was in college, there were still a couple of half pennies inside the button box and I would pick them up and imagine that they were now even more valuable and that they really could be sold for a large fortune, which would make our whole family wildly rich. But the half pennies remained inside the button box alongside my youthful imagination.
As the years went by I moved to Massachusetts, got married and had a family. My parents moved around a few times and I never really thought about the button box, until about a month ago when I went down to the Cape to visit my mother and my sister Karen, who was there from California. We were sitting around the kitchen table, each of us enjoying a morning cup of coffee, talking about the year that had just gone by. We talked through all that Eddie and our family had gone through, and for a moment our eyes teared up together and we understood that they were shared tears of gratitude. Mom and Karen talked about how deeply the suffering of one member of the family had affected them, and how hard it was to be far away. They were grateful for this church family who made meals, sent cards and encouraging emails, cut the grass and held us up with their collective strength. My sister and mother commented on the impact of seeing the beloved community of God working and caring for one another. Then Mom and Karen continued to share the blessings and the struggles of their life and before we knew it we were on to the second round of coffee. It was good to be together, to laugh and to talk. We started to look towards the future and imagine what it might hold for our families, our health and our lives. Mom then got up and disappeared into her bedroom for just a few minutes and when she came back she brought with her the button box.
It was the same old button box that Karen and I remembered, maybe with few more scratches on top but with just as many buttons inside. The three of us began to slowly sift through the button box, as if we were panning for gold. There was still an endless supply of little white buttons for business shirts and a large array of shiny and colorful buttons. There was a tag for a pair of Levi jeans for 9.50 cents, a Knit Fixer for .98 cents, a partial packet of hooks and eyes (Size 2) from Sears, Roebuck and Company, and a package of 79 assorted needles for .69 cents from Woolworth’s Five and Dime. There was a needle in that package for every requirement. At about the same time, Karen and I remembered the half pennies, but they were nowhere to be found inside the old tin button box. We wondered where they had gone and lamented the loss of our dream to become wildly rich.
But we did pull something else out of the button box that day and that was our shared memories, and a sense of gratitude for family and for friends that were always there.
As we sat around the table, moving on to our third cup of coffee, we went back in time to those Sunday dinners and Thanksgiving gatherings with aunts and uncles, cousins, friends and neighbors who would gather to eat, to talk, to discuss, to argue and to laugh with. Every meal at my grandparent’s home and our home began with a word of grace and thanksgiving. Thanks for one another and for whatever it was that was before us, on our plate or in our life, because God’s grace is there and it is always enough. And as we reflected and looked at the big picture of our lives, we realized yet again, that it is always people in relationships which make us wildly rich. That is true abundance. There is nothing better. We know that we won’t find satisfaction in the abundance of our things, but always in the abundance of our relationships. The eyes of our heart were opened yet again to the enduring strength of love. Love for one another, even when things aren’t perfect and the enduring strength of God’s steadfast love which is perfect. God’s perfect love and grace is always there and multiplies with use - just like the small white buttons that were always inside my grandmother’s button box – for love never ends.
This week may the grace of the Lord be with you in all of your living and in all of your giving thanks.
Amen
Rev. Deborah J. Blanchard ©2009
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